It does rather look as though no-one had thought to have anti-drone defences set up in the first place, and/or that what we have is not portable/flexible enough. But how much we shall be told is a difficult balance to strike. And that would be to assume a competent minister in charge: if it falls to Grayling to take the lead, a wake-up call may not be enough

Do you know what charges they can expect? Did they caught them?

I cannot believe the LGW incident was the last one we will see. What a simple way to create chaos for millions of people and not just at the airport "attacked" either.

Now there are doubts raised as to the veracity of claims that there were ANY rogue drones. Apparently nothing was captured on camera and subsequent sightings were linked back to police drones used in the police operation. No images of ANY rogue drones over this period lasting over a day. How can that be (assuming what I've read is true)?

Regardless , was there chaos? And if there were no drones then what does that tell you about the future?

The future? Now there WILL be drones.

You can bet on it IMO

But if there were no actual drones, clearly all the ill-intentioned have to do is keep telephoning in with false sightings.

There are certainly offences to do with interfering with airport operations or some such. Some protesters who blocked a plane that was due to deport a failed asylum-seeker were sentenced to prison.

That this nuisance will drone on for quite some time.

PatrickLondon: Yes, now there will be "drone scares" in addition to bomb scares. Disruption without even the minor expense of buying a drone.

With the Police supplying the drones as it turned out.

I haven't followed this story very closely but I've heard of no charges that false drone sightings were reported with the intent to disrupt airport operations. Details are cloudy around this and whether there were real drones or not is less important in my view. The important (and worrying) thing here is that nobody really knows and the whole operation appears to have been botched beyond belief. I don't have any specialist understanding of this type of thing but you'd think that some electronic systems would have a record of this incursion. Or photos from the (presumably) countless security experts deployed to deal with this or the thousands of members of the public in the vicinity. Instead, we just have officials having to reassure the public that there were most likely drones (an obvious political necessity) but without any of the data/information that you'd expect to back this up. Embarrassing.

Could also be the well known fact that when say reports of UFOs are sighted there is a jump in such sightings as folks imagine they see something. There was an experiment on this once I read about where a radio station mentioned that mysterious lights were seen and within an hour they were flooded with such sightings.

" There are certainly offences to do with interfering with airport operations or some such. Some protesters who blocked a plane that was due to deport a failed asylum-seeker were sentenced to prison."

Patrick, do you have a link to that story? I was hoping that some action would be taken against them but never saw anything in the news.

This was supposed to be the drone that was videoed over Gatwick:

They're facing life imprisonment. I guess you think that's fair. I however think that's an outrage.

No one caught
Potential punishment for up to 5 years which in the UK means up to 2.5 years.
Cheaper to take out a Jumbo with a drone than all that getting to learn to fly nonsense the Saudis did in Florida.

Interesting views on incompetence, certainly the responsibility should first fall to the operator of the airport (at the time a conglomerate of businesses), then the Police who have been playing catchup. New system installed in three days but no one saying what it is. It will be one to watch going forward.

There were no drones. No one did anything.

Thanks for the link Patrick, that wasn't the story I was thinking about, hadn't heard about that one, A couple of months ago there was a report on a group of (idiots, I want to feel good about myself)) passengers that wouldn't let a plane take off because there was a deportee on board and they didn't think he should be deported, the fact was that he was a criminal and had served a sentence for raping a 16 year old girl, I sure the victim was very pleased with their actions.

How do you know this? Just a clue, proving a negative is tough. :-) Happy New Year.